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Outschooling

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Re: Outschooling

#61

Post by burfog »

notacoward wrote: post #40
camelNotation wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is a problem with homeschooling as much as with a subset of homeschoolers - particularly religious fundamentalists and anarchist types. My wife and I homeschool, but we have our kids pushing well beyond their grade level in every subject. She had a teaching license up until a couple of years ago (they do expire after a while) and taught for several years before we had kids. Then, once they arrived,…

> particularly religious fundamentalists and anarchist types. You mean the significant majority of home schoolers, driving most of the agenda e.g. around certification and curriculum standards? Public schools are meant to ensure that every child can get a minimal level of education. Obviously it's great when people can do better, whether it's through regular public schools, charter schools, private schools, or home s…

You don't have to be a religious fundamentalist of any type (Christian, Muslim, Jewish, etc.) to be deeply offended by the political indoctrination in the history and sex-ed classes. Atheists and agnostics are not of one mind on those subjects.

Re: Outschooling

#62

Post by carlob »

hawkesnest wrote: post #55
carlob wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure your kids are great, as you are probably well educated and wealthier than the average. Have you ever asked yourself what is the effect of removing your kids for public schools on the less fortunate? Let me put it another way: most children who have some medical doctor in their extended family don't really need to be visited regularly by a pediatrician. That doesn't really imply that most people who refuse to…

But if the kids have a doctor in the family...they're being examined by a medical doctor. The idiots that don't take their kids to the doctor...are idiots. Let's NOT institute forced doctor visitations (with all the cost, overhead, bureaucracy, potential for fraud, etc) for all parents, EVEN THE EXEMPLARY ONES, to deal with that problem. Instead, let's figure out if there are better ways to ensure that parents have t…

> The idiots that don't take their kids to the doctor...are idiots.

Do you think that being a teacher is easier than being a medical doctor?

I know somebody who is a primary school teacher in Northern France, on the border with Belgium (a disadvantaged area for France, but no worse than some parts of the American South), every single year she has to deal with medical or social issues that would have gone otherwise unnoticed: abusive families, contagious diseases that went unnoticed, kids who were not eating healthy at home...

My point is that it is often thanks to public schools that we don't need forced doctor (or god forbid social serivices) visitations.

Re: Outschooling

#63

Post by notacoward »

burfog wrote: post #61
notacoward wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> particularly religious fundamentalists and anarchist types. You mean the significant majority of home schoolers, driving most of the agenda e.g. around certification and curriculum standards? Public schools are meant to ensure that every child can get a minimal level of education. Obviously it's great when people can do better, whether it's through regular public schools, charter schools, private schools, or home s…

You don't have to be a religious fundamentalist of any type (Christian, Muslim, Jewish, etc.) to be deeply offended by the political indoctrination in the history and sex-ed classes. Atheists and agnostics are not of one mind on those subjects.

I don't think that contradicts any of what I said. If people have a principled objection to public school, good for them. They should have the right to secure an equivalent education any other way they choose ... but it has to be equivalent. If not, too bad. Parents aren't allowed to feed their children sawdust instead of food, and they're not allowed to fill their their children's heads with religious/libertarian dogma instead of an actual education, for the same reason. Either would be a violation of the child's rights, and that's unacceptable in a civilized society.

Re: Outschooling

#64

Post by surge »

carlob wrote: post #51
surge wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The less fortunate are the ones bullying other children, holding back the curriculum so that no child is left behind, putting someone else's child in harms way because of some undefined benefit to other's with worse parents isn't a fix. Fix the socio economic problems first so those kids have better parents. Don't put my kid in with them thinking its going to socialize other kids better rather than what normally happ…

Except that most of the research that has been done on this subject shows exactly the opposite: social mixing in schools has a great positive effect on the less fortunate and almost negligible effect on the more fortunate (we're talking here about a situation where the composition of a class reflects that of society as a whole, not some extreme example like throwing a wealthy kid in a inner city class). Also societie…

Most research? What research? By research do you mean an opinion piece you read once? Most research says homeschoolers perform massively better on average then public school kids do. So what research addresses that, if kids perform not as well in public school.

https://www.dailyinfographic.com/homeschooling-by-the-number...

Re: Outschooling

#65

Post by wutman »

up_and_up wrote: post #16

My wife are secular homeschoolers and have homeschooled our 3 kids: 10,8,5 for 5 years. We use outschool regularly, its a great platform to introduce random topics. I would invest in it honestly. AMA I guess

What does outschool offer that khanacademy doesn't have?

Re: Outschooling

#66

Post by EdwardDiego »

up_and_up wrote: post #24
charliesharding wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What were the primary motivations for homeschooling? Cultural? Political? Quality? Access? Also how do you go about socializing them? I've been considering it myself

My wife was from a very competitive school district which forced overachievement and I got beat up by bullies in a small town school. Besides the personal anecdotes, 1. we felt like time was passing too quickly and wanted to have them around, we wanted to be together basically. 2. with 3 kids my wife hasnt been able to work (her line of work is not well paying), so it made sense to start homeschooling vs private scho…

Congratulations on doing it right with regards to socialisation. Sadly, many homeschoolers (in my anecdotal experience) do it wrong - they tend to be the same ones who homeschool for religious reasons.

Re: Outschooling

#67

Post by carlob »

camelNotation wrote: post #53
carlob wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Literally zero evidence for this. On average, kids that are homeschooled walk away with higher levels achievement and fewer psychological issues than their traditionally schooled peers. They integrate just fine into society. There is plenty of evidence of the contrary though, that kids born in families with low income and educational achievement do much much better when they are in a socially diverse school as oppo…

> Sure maybe homeschooled kids are slightly better off, but that comes at a huge cost for all the kids who have a single parent who works three jobs that will never be able to afford to homeschool them. You are proposing to offset economic inequality by degrading the education of the privileged. Your goal should be improve the education of the disadvantaged instead. Raise all boats, don't drain the lake. It's obvious…

> You are proposing to offset economic inequality by degrading the education of the privileged. Your goal should be improve the education of the disadvantaged instead. Raise all boats, don't drain the lake. It's obvious that the United States could spend much more on education and do a much better job with the schools they have. Pinning any significant portion of the "huge cost" of the current system on middle class homeschoolers seems like sophistry intended to avoid the abuses of the hyper-capitalist, atomized system and ignores the actual problem.

I think you're exaggerating the negative effects of sending almost everybody to public schools. Look at Scandinavia, France, Germany (or even southern European countries), the vast majority of people goes to public schools and it's not like the advancement of humanity has stopped there. A similar argument can be made for socialized medicine, a highly privatized system like the American one ends up being: more expensive, more iniquitous and less effective. If you really think that dismantling or undermining the public school system is not going to end like the medical system in the US, well I don't know how to convince you.

Re: Outschooling

#68

Post by hawkesnest »

carlob wrote: post #62
hawkesnest wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if the kids have a doctor in the family...they're being examined by a medical doctor. The idiots that don't take their kids to the doctor...are idiots. Let's NOT institute forced doctor visitations (with all the cost, overhead, bureaucracy, potential for fraud, etc) for all parents, EVEN THE EXEMPLARY ONES, to deal with that problem. Instead, let's figure out if there are better ways to ensure that parents have t…

> The idiots that don't take their kids to the doctor...are idiots. Do you think that being a teacher is easier than being a medical doctor? I know somebody who is a primary school teacher in Northern France, on the border with Belgium (a disadvantaged area for France, but no worse than some parts of the American South), every single year she has to deal with medical or social issues that would have gone otherwise un…

> Do you think that being a teacher is easier than being a medical doctor?

What the hell does that matter?

Look, I'm not saying there isn't value to public education. And I'm not saying that educators don't provide a valuable and important service. But forcing public education as the panacea for finding all the ways parents fail their children is sub-optimal.

If you want to find abuses, diseases, malnutrition, etc, then let's mandate yearly doctor visits. I'd back that up WAY more than forced public education.

Re: Outschooling

#69

Post by surge »

carlob wrote: post #67
camelNotation wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure maybe homeschooled kids are slightly better off, but that comes at a huge cost for all the kids who have a single parent who works three jobs that will never be able to afford to homeschool them. You are proposing to offset economic inequality by degrading the education of the privileged. Your goal should be improve the education of the disadvantaged instead. Raise all boats, don't drain the lake. It's obvious…

> You are proposing to offset economic inequality by degrading the education of the privileged. Your goal should be improve the education of the disadvantaged instead. Raise all boats, don't drain the lake. It's obvious that the United States could spend much more on education and do a much better job with the schools they have. Pinning any significant portion of the "huge cost" of the current system on middle class…

I think you're looking at different school systems and using it to leverage criticisms of home schooling in the US.

Fix public schooling in the US first, make it so it isn't so easy for home schoolers to out perform. Don't make kids guinea pigs while you figure out how to fix it. Then and only then can you level a critical eye on US home schoolers if the vast majority weren't doing a better job than public schools. If you're going to advocate for public school in the US, advocate in what ways that schools today by majority statistics are better than home schooling (socialization actually isn't one of them). Because all I see is a system that is 100 years out of date, anti-science (in terms of teaching methodology and pedagogy versus neuroscience and child development studies) and throwing money at problems that goes to the administrators not to teacher pay or reducing class sizes or anything substantial.

Re: Outschooling

#70

Post by carlob »

surge wrote: post #64
carlob wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that most of the research that has been done on this subject shows exactly the opposite: social mixing in schools has a great positive effect on the less fortunate and almost negligible effect on the more fortunate (we're talking here about a situation where the composition of a class reflects that of society as a whole, not some extreme example like throwing a wealthy kid in a inner city class). Also societie…

Most research? What research? By research do you mean an opinion piece you read once? Most research says homeschoolers perform massively better on average then public school kids do. So what research addresses that, if kids perform not as well in public school. https://www.dailyinfographic.com/homeschooling-by-the-number...

It is well known that school results are mostly explained by socioeconomic status (I read somewhere up to 75% of the variance can be explained that way). So if you don't take into account other factors that graph doesn't prove anything other than people who can afford private schools and homescholing are on average richer. My guess is that the rest of the data can be explained by smaller class sizes and better resources.

If you want more research this [0] article has a good bibliography on the effects of socioeconomic diversity in schools

[0] https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...

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